TCP: Peter
by Andraste
Summary: A tale of surburban dreams, among other, stranger things.


Disclaimer - The universe belongs to Marvel, but I'm not borrowing any of their toys today. The TCP concept isn't mine either, but Kielle and Laersyn are kind enough to share :). Oh, and I mention "Star Wars" in passing, which isn't mine either.  
  
Peter  
  
By Andraste  
  
It wasn't the first time that Ellen saw Peter, but it was the first time she took any notice. She'd seen him around, and was vaguely aware that he lived down the street, but she didn't know his name.   
  
Ellen had also noticed, in an off-handed way, that he was quite beautiful, the kind of child adults always wanted to touch and pinch, as if he was some food too delicious to be eaten. But he never came to play in the street, and he wasn't part of her gang, so there her interest ended.  
That particular afternoon, however, there wasn't much else around to be interested in. Ellen was sitting on the sidewalk with Louise, scratching patterns in the summer dust and feeling bored the way only a seven-year-old can. Their older brothers and sisters were playing soccer, but they'd performed their "Ellen and Louise are babies and can't play with us big kids" routine, and Ellen privately thought it was too hot anyway. And, besides, soccer was a dumb game.  
  
Every now and then, Louise, a year younger than Ellen and their gang's little tag-along, would suggest that they do something, but nothing grabbed Ellen's attention until she saw the boy walk by. He was with his family - a man and a lady, and a toddler in a stroller. The boy strode out in front of them all, red-blond hair too long down on his shoulders and tossing in the little breeze his quick walking made. He had a face like the sky before a thunder storm, or like Ellen's mother when someone broke a window. The rest of the family trailed behind him miserably, the baby whimpering. On any other day Ellen might not have noticed them, but now something about the group caught her attention. They were weird. It was obvious that the boy was mad with his mom and dad, but when Ellen was mad with her parents, she usually got sent to her room. The parents looked like they were the ones doing the sulking.  
  
After they'd gone past, Louise leaned over and whispered, too loudly, in Ellen's ear.   
  
"That boy Peter lives in a magic house and he never has to go to school."   
  
Ellen was about to reply, with all the bite she could muster, that there was no such thing as a magic house and everyone had to go to school, but it was the first interesting thing Louise had said all afternoon, so she didn't.  
  
"Oh really?"   
  
"Yeah. My brother said that he hardly ever goes out at all. His mom and dad won't let him."  
Ellen thought about this for a while. Although the she knew that Louise's brothers often lied, it was true that she'd never seen the boy - Peter? - at school, or on the street alone.  
  
"So what's so magic about his house?"  
  
"My brother went in there to get his baseball, and it was on the porch, and when he went to get it there were noises and flashing lights and everything."   
  
"Louise! That's not magic, it's alarms. My uncle makes them."  
  
"Not like these ones! Jeremy said they were real laser lights, like in "Star Wars", and they would have got him too, if he hadn't run away."  
  
Ellen stood up. Louise's ideas were, well, dumb, but looking down the street after the Peter and his retreating family, Ellen thought there might be something in it. She noticed another strange thing - they all looked like people on TV. Especially Peter, who didn't have any dust or ice-cream stains or anything most kids would have at the end of a summer day. His sneakers were actually white, and his face was washed. He looked ironed.  
  
"I'm gonna follow them, then, and see the magic "Star Wars" laser lights. Coming?"  
  
"Ellen you, can't go in there! It's a magic house!"  
  
"That's what makes it exciting."  
  
She started off down the sidewalk. Louise trailing behind, glancing anxiously back towards where the older kids had abandoned their soccer game at last and stated setting up an impromptu hose fight to fill the hour left before dinner.   
  
"Ellen, come back here!" she said.  
  
Ellen ignored her and kept walking, just a short way down the street to where the family had disappeared to. Cautiously, she looked around for a way in, wishing she'd brought the soccer ball so she could pretend to be getting it if she got caught. Oh well, she could always pretend to be looking for Snowball. The gang had gotten into a lot of yards while 'looking for Snowball.'  
  
Including the yard next door to Peter's house, which Ellen seemed to remember had a hole in the fence. She stepped into the garden, Louise still hopping from foot to foot beside her.  
  
"Ellen I'm going to tell your mom."  
  
Although Ellen was too old to be really frightened of her mother, it was still a fairly dire threat and might involve a temporary loss of desert privileges. Ellen swiftly weighed up the pros and cons and decided that the trip would be worth it for even one magic laser light. She left Louise on the sidewalk and slipped through the hole in the fence.  
  
***  
  
Quietly as a mouse - or, even quieter, as her cat, who could hear mice without them hearing her - Ellen crept up to the thick trees and bushes that surrounded the house. Dropping down on to all fours, she crawled through the brush until she reached a window, desperately trying not to break a twig and give herself away. Soon, she found a window, with a chink of artificial light that crept out into the deepening afternoon. It was covered over with curtains, but whoever closed them had pulled one too far from one edge, leaving a tiny gap that Ellen could peer through with a mixture of nervousness and excitement. There were people inside, and if she kept very still and quiet she could hear what they were saying.  
  
Peter was there, sitting in a small armchair, just made for someone his size, while his parents stood in front of him, eyes on the floor. He had taken off his well-ironed street clothes and was wearing a red dressing gown and a pair of slippers.   
  
"What the hell did you think you were doing!" Peter shouted at his father. Ellen had to bite her fingers to keep from giggling. She'd never heard anyone swear at their parents before.  
  
"Saving lives. Children's lives," the man replied.  
  
"If you want to play superhero, you can leave my employ and join the bloody X-Men."  
  
"You can't expect us to let a school bus crash when we have the power to prevent it," protested the woman, jiggling the baby she held in her arms.  
  
Peter threw his hands up in the air. On a small table in front of him was a glass bottle like the one daddy kept in his study, and he had a glass of the smelly drink daddy kept in it in his hand. He leaned back in the tiny armchair, and swallowed it quickly.  
  
"I'm paying you to protect me. Discreetly."  
  
The adults stayed quiet, staring at the floor as the boy reached into his pocket for a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Ellen knew that wasn't allowed.  
  
"Paying you to protect me. Not to lift school buses of the road with your bare hands. Do you know how close you came to exposing all of us? What kind of idiots are you?!"  
  
"I just thought . . ." said the man, who Ellen had worked out by now was probably not Peter's father.  
  
"I'm not paying you to think, I'm paying you to be Mr. and Mrs. Average Suburbia 2000! Millions of people do it without getting paid. What is it you're finding so challenging?!"  
  
"It isn't easy, you know," said the lady sulkily, "trying to pretend to be a happy, normal family all the time when we live in this . . . this . . . fortress. How is Madison going to cope when she gets older? It's not exactly a normal environment to rear a child in, is it?"  
  
Peter lit his cigarette, took a deep breath and inhaled. The woman grimaced.   
  
He stood up and strolled over to the window, sighing. Ellen crouched down further, praying that they wouldn't hear her heart beating louder.  
  
"Perhaps this was a bad idea from the start," he said softly, "I'm afraid we may require a change of plan."   
  
The man and the woman looked relieved and worried at the same time.   
  
"You may go now," Peter said, in a tone that suggested that this was an order, not a request.  
After they left, Peter reached over to the table and poured out another glass.  
  
Then, strolling over to the window again and looking straight up into Ellen's eyes, he gave her a hard stare and a half-smile.  
  
"I think that you, on the other hand, had better come in."  
  
***  
  
"And before you ask, Anne Rice stole it from me."  
  
Ellen stared down into the basement with her mouth open. There was a huge space down there . . . a space large enough for a miniature house, with it's own little garden. There were lights hanging from the ceiling that were getting dimmer all the time, just like the sun outside must have been.  
  
Peter had invited her inside politely, after catching her, and the "looking for Snowball story" had died in her mouth. Ellen still wasn't sure that she should be in here, but figured that it was okay if a kid asked you over to their house, even if they'd just caught you looking the window and you hadn't asked your mom. And Peter was a kid, even if he was really weird, and aloud to drink and smoke and swear and shout at his parents. He had asked her standard, adult-type questions, though, about school and what she wanted to do when she grew up.  
  
The house was just like the house they were inside already, and it reminded Ellen of the Russian doll her uncle had given her. She wondered if it had an even smaller house inside. Peter started down the basement stairs, and beckoned to her to follow him. The inside was just like the bigger house as well, with the same carpet and paintings and wall paper, but all reduced down to Peter's scale. He sent her into the living room and disappeared for a minute, returning with a can of Coke that he gave to her with a triumphant flourish. Ellen was pleased. Her mother had too many rules about soft drink.   
  
Ellen looked around at all the things she could see, with a surge of happiness rising up inside her. She loved this house already. Nothing was out of reach, or off-limits, or too big. She longed to rush through the rest of it, looking for the tiny microwave, and the little beds, and the tiny dress-up clothes in the closets.   
  
They both sat down, Peter on a little chair that was just the same as the one upstairs. There was another glass bottle on the table, too, but Peter didn't pour himself any more drinks. Ellen had told him, wide-eyed, that cigarettes made you die, and he had laughed strangely, and put his out.   
  
"And so, Ellen Liddell, what do you think of my house?" he said.  
  
"I think it's cool. I mean, my friend Jason has a tree house, but there's nothing like this anywhere."  
  
"I'm pleased to have the opportunity to show it off, to tell you the truth. I have to keep so many delicious secrets, it's nice to be able to reveal a few now and then. And since it's going to be torn down, it's probably best to seal it in as many memories as possible."  
  
Ellen felt her heart sink. She'd already been planning to come back here and show the house off to her friends, feeling especially pleased about the way the older ones weren't going to fit through the door.  
  
"Torn down! But you can't do that!"  
  
"I'm afraid that I shall have to, dear child. Now that fool Stewart has risked being discovered, and now that you have seen it . . . Well, let's just say that there are people who would like to repay some very old debts if they caught a whiff of where I was hiding."  
  
Ellen paused for a moment, and took a solemn sip of her drink. She didn't understand one word in three of some of the things Peter said, and would have liked more time to get used to him. But if she wasn't going to get come back, she would just have to ask her questions now.  
  
"Peter," she said cautiously, "you aren't . . . y'know . . . normal, are you?"  
  
He laughed again. She didn't like him so much when he laughed.  
  
"No, child, I am not normal. I am what they are now calling a mutant."  
  
Ellen opened her mouth wide. She had guessed that the man who stopped the bus must have been a super hero, although Peter said he wasn't, but she'd heard a lot of stories about mutants killing people and taking over islands and blowing things up. Then again, most of those stories had come from Louise's older brothers, who weren't exactly a reliable source. Ellen certainly didn't have anything in particular against mutants in general; like most seven-year-old cartoon fans she was half hoping she was one. So instead of asking why he wasn't green or whether he was going to eat her, she cut to the most important question.  
  
"Can you make laser lights?"  
  
Peter laughed again. "No, that would be my other body guard and her booby traps. I don't throw playing cards, or make rain, or shoot lasers, I'm afraid. For me, my "power" is merely the cause of my current condition."  
  
"Condition?" Ellen's friend Laura had had a condition once, but Peter didn't seem to have any spots.  
  
"I have been ten years old for a very long time, my dear child. And will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Hence the name, by the way."  
  
As Ellen's knowledge of Disney Classics started with "The Little Mermaid", the reference, like so much of the conversation, went skimming over her head.  
  
"You never get to grow up?" Ellen considered this carefully. On the one hand, she knew all about the downside of being a kid. But on the other, it was pretty good at times, or so her older siblings and parents kept telling her. Then again, Peter was already allowed to drink, smoke, swear and yell and people, so what exactly was he missing out on by not being an adult?  
  
"That's pretty good, isn't it?" she said tentatively.  
  
"Believe me, it begins to pall after the first fifty years or so."  
  
"But you've got all this stuff, and parents who do what you tell them, so it can't be that bad."  
  
"Yes, indeed. All I need is a little child-sized wife and my life will be complete."   
  
He gave a strange laugh, and Ellen started to feel frightened again.  
  
At that moment, the lady appeared at the window of the sitting room, looking anxious.  
  
"Peter? What are you doing?"  
  
He smiled at her, showing too many teeth.  
  
"Entertaining a visitor."  
  
"Well, the visitor's mother wants to know where she is."  
  
Peter sighed.   
  
"Well, Ellen Liddell. It would appear that our time together has come to an end all too soon. If you would allow me thirty seconds to get changed, I will escort you to the door."  
  
In under half a minute, Peter was back in his street clothes, and they were on their way out.   
Ellen stared around longingly, feeling as if she was being expelled from paradise.   
  
As they went up the stairs, she turned to Peter.  
  
"If you like you could come over to my house and play tomorrow," she said.  
  
He looked surprised at that, surprised and pleased. And sad at the same time.  
  
"I . . . don't think that would be a good idea. I don't think that I'll be seeing you any more, Ellen. Even so, it was kind of you to offer."   
  
They reached the front door, and Ellen's mother.  
  
"Ellen! You know you're not supposed to go over to other people's houses without consulting me first!"  
  
Ellen grimaced. She hated it when her mother yelled at her in front of other people. But Peter gave her a wink and stepped into the breach.  
  
"Oh, but it was my fault for asking her," he said, turning big blue eyes and a musical voice up full bore, "and it was so nice to have such a polite visitor. *Please* don't shout at Ellen."   
  
Her mom relented.  
  
"Well, alright then," she said, smiling and patting Peter on the head. Ellen would have been willing to bet that he hated that, though he made no protest, "but we have to go home now."  
  
"Goodbye, Ellen," Peter said, managing to make it sound like a long goodbye, for her ears alone.  
  
"Goodbye, Peter," she replied, holding out a hand for him to shake.   
  
And with that, she left him there, standing on the porch with a woman who was not his mother, watching her walk away into the setting sun.   
  
The End  



End file.
